Murray Moss-Design Impresario
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Murray Moss: Design Impresario Crista I. Mechlinski Bazoian Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in History of Design and Curatorial Studies MA Program in History of Design and Curatorial Studies Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution; and Parsons The New School for Design 2015 ©2015 Crista I. Mechlinski Bazoian All Rights Reserved Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter One: Staging a Career in Design: Murray Moss in Theater and Fashion 6 Chapter Two: From Clothing to Objects 11 Chapter Three: Choosing a Location and Opening Moss 14 SoHo, A Brief History of the Neighborhood 15 Chapter Four: Moss, Influential Exhibitions 19 Inspiration from the Museum of Modern Art, New York 20 Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, Achievements and Problems of Italian Design 22 Retail as Theater 24 The Art of Merchandising and Merchandise as Art: Alessi and Iittala 29 Tupperware 31 Chapter Five: Droog and the Dissemination of Dutch Design 35 Chapter Six: Siegfried Bing, Terence Conran and Selling Design Before Moss 38 Chapter Seven: More Moss, at Home and Abroad 42 Chapter Eight: Closing Shop, Opening a Bureau 47 Conclusion 50 Bibliography 53 Illustrations 57 i List of Illustrations 1. Page 1 and 2 from Tertium Quid 57 2. Ronaldus Shamask, Spiral Coat 57 3. Angelo Mangiarotti, Bibulo Decanter 58 4. Exterior of Moss, 146 Greene Street 58 5. Interior of Moss, 146-150 Greene Street 59 6. Lucian Bernhard, Kaffee Haag Poster 60 7. Cover of Machine Art Catalog, 1994 edition 60 8. Ruth Bernhard, Outdoor Propeller 61 9. Gaetano Pesce, Donna chair and footstool 61 10. Moss display of Nooka watches, featuring signage 62 11. Moss Interior 62 12. Tejo Remy, You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory 63 13. Where There’s Smoke, at Moss 63 14. Exterior L’Art Nouveau, Paris, France 64 15. Interior L’Art Nouveau, Paris, France 64 16. Moss Interior, showing “runway” 65 ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Murray Moss and Franklin Getchell for their humor and honesty, but mostly for being so generous with their time during the researching and writing of this thesis. I am grateful to my advisor and first reader, Dr. Sarah Lichtman, for her focused advice and en- thusiasm for this topic, and for keeping me on track to complete the work. I would like to thank Professor Ethan Robey for his time and input as a second reader, and all of my professors in this program, whose instruction and expertise continues to inspire my interest in the decorative arts and design. In addition, I would like to recognize Greg Sages and my colleagues at The Glass House in New Canaan, CT who supported my academic endeavors with encouragement and understand- ing. I am grateful to Henry Urbach for introducing me to Murray Moss and providing me with such a wonderful opportunity to work with him on the Glass House Design Store project. To all my friends in Rowayton, CT and those along with my nieces, mother and sister in Canada: thank you for helping me take care of my family while I worked on my master’s degree. John Haffner Layden and Allan Cunningham—thank you both for your time and advice. iii This work is dedicated to my family, Jeff, Caith and Myles. Thank you for your incredible support, patience and encouragement. iv Introduction At a book launch held on May 12, 2014, entrepreneur, design impresario, and curatorial consultant Murray Moss shared a personal project representing a new stage in his career in visual culture. Two years previously, Moss had shuttered his influential, eponymous New York-based design gallery (1994-2012), before opening the consultancy Moss Bureau to undertake curatorial and writing projects on behalf of various clients.1 On that spring night, Moss presented Tertium Quid (Latin for “the third thing”), a book accompanying a photography exhibition he curated for Hauser Wirth Gallery in New York City.2 For material, Moss combed the Internet for months, collecting archival photographs from faltering American news publications.3 He then paired im- ages, mostly black-and-white prints dating from the mid-twentieth century, to create unusual, striking juxtapositions. He selected the pairings to prompt viewers to look beyond the news sto- ries the images originally illustrated, and uncover something more—the “third thing” of Moss’s book title. (Figure 1) Some combinations drew attention to mood or theme; other pairings high- lighted formal qualities—shape, line, form. In all cases, each print in a pair helped create a new context from which viewers could derive new meaning, provoking reactions from shock to de- 1 In 2013 Moss co-authored the first book on Baccarat titled Baccarat: 250 Years of Craftsman- ship and Creativity with Laurence Benaim (Rizzoli). That same year Moss Bureau was contract- ed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to re-design the museum shop at the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan CT. In 2014 he wrote the text for the book Georg Jensen: Reflections (Rizzoli). 2 Murray Moss, Tertium Quid (New York: August Editions, 2014). 3 Moss focused on original gelatin press photos from the archives of the Detroit News, St. Pe- tersburg Times, Chicago Sun-Times, the Baltimore Sun, among others. The prints he acquired and exhibited are mainly ones that remain after news organizations digitize their archives. !1 light. In the book, Moss argues that for the exhibition he designed an experience just as a photog- rapher does by manipulating an image’s framing, cropping, and other aspects to construct a story and shape viewers’ reactions. In the introduction Moss writes: Like a designer of a chair or a lamp or any industrial object created to fulfill a particular func- tion, a press photographer, on occasion, will have such talent and imagination and ambition as to infuse that brief with additional content, or narrative, and on rare occasion, even with a kind of universality. …The image is so much more poignant or more beautiful—more poetic, more strik- ing—than the typical ‘workhorse’ photograph that it takes on a narrative of its own and with that, the ability to stand alone.4 This statement serves as an apt summary of Moss’s contributions to design culture over the last two decades. In this thesis I will argue that his approach to, and impact on the display, dissemination and retail of design since the late 1990s earns him the distinction of being the pre- eminent design impresario in the United States of the last twenty-five years. Through his design gallery and present-day consultancy, Moss seeks out objects that embody a kind of universality, presenting and promoting them in innovative ways and spurring public discourse on design in the service of commerce and a richer visual culture. I will present his ideology as expressed to me over the course of six interviews and during a professional collaboration with Moss which oc- curred between March 2013 and February 2015.5 In the first chapter, I will explore Moss’s early life and influences. I will argue that his theory surrounding the displacement of objects from their usual settings enveloping them in nar- 4 Murray Moss, “Introduction” in Tertium Quid (New York: August Editions, 2014). 5 The author worked in tandem with Murray Moss and Moss Bureau on the 2013 redesign of the museum shop of the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan CT. www.designstore.the- glasshouse.org !2 ratives that capture the cultural, commercial and aesthetic significance of things, was born out of a grassroots modernism that was embraced by his parents in suburban Chicago. Moss developed his theory of display and presentation further as he explored careers in theater and fashion. I learned about his early career during our conversations and while researching the archives of the New York Times and Women’s Wear Daily. In the second chapter, I will demonstrate how Moss transitioned from careers in theater and fashion to one in design. The objects he favors are wide- ranging—household products and furnishings, decorative objects, limited editions and fine art— but all, to borrow Moss’s observation, have the ability to “stand alone.” And they all benefit from Moss’s signature theatrical presentation and rigorously controlled retail and exhibition environ- ments, which is something I will explore in relation to Moss and his design gallery. In the third chapter, I will discuss how Moss came to position himself as a retailer in SoHo, New York’s gallery district in the early 1990s. I will begin by discussing his design theory as it applies to the interior architecture of the store and the placement of merchandise. I will also demonstrate the impact his shop had on the neighborhood. In Chapter Four, I will discuss Moss’s influences, in- cluding the exhibition design of the architects and curators Philip Johnson (1906-2005) and Emilio Ambasz (1943-). I will argue that Moss shares with Johnson the ability to elevate the sta- tus of humble materials and industrial objects in part, through artful display. He found great in- spiration for his store displays in a reprint of the catalogue to Johnson’s Machine Art exhibition (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1934). Moss revealed to me that the greatest influence on his appreciation and theories of display however came in 1972, after seeing another MoMA ex- hibition: Italy the New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and Problems of Italian Design cu- rated by Ambasz. I will discuss how Moss’s exposure to Italian post modernism at that show !3 would prepare him for the work of the Dutch designers he would champion later in his career— students of the Design Academy Eindhoven who exhibited for the first time together under the umbrella of Droog in 1993.